Contraception and Protestantism?

[ForTheChurch]

May what?
May be?
May not be?

Cafeteria Catholics are definitely the majority

 

[L_piperatus]

I was listening to a program the other day regarding the whole contraception/ Catholic Church/ Insurance etc debate and something was mentioned to the effect that Protestantism had a similar view on birth control that the CC has now but has changed over time. My understanding is that birth control is ok within Protestantism(please correct if I’m wrong). Anyways, if this is the case, when and why has this stance changed?

Here’s an amazing paper written by an Evangelical Lutheran scholar:

CHILDREN OF THE REFORMATION
A Short & Surprising History of Protestantism & Contraception

by Allan Carlson

Read more: touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-04-020-f#ixzz1or6jYxI5

(Allan Carlson is President of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). His books include Conjugal America: On The Public Purposes of Marriage and The Natural Family: Bulwark of Liberty. He is married and has four children and is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He is a senior editor for Touchstone Magazine.)

According to the paper, the first serious break with Catholic morality came when Martin Luther, who was a celibate monk who took a vow to unmarried (abstinent) life, rejected the idea that man can have the strength to stay sexually abstinent. Luther married a nun, and had some six children with her. The effect of Luther’s innovation has been that Protestantism rejected 2 ideas:

1. Unmarried celibate life, even though Jesus himself was never married, and Paul was also never married and Paul clearly explained in his letters the superiority of the single state compared to marriage;
2. Abstinence within marriage, whether temporal abstinence or total abstinence such as the Holy Virgin Mary who remained virgin for her whole life, although she was married to St. Joseph. Interestingly, though, Martin Luther did defend the historical teaching of the Church that Mary remained a virgin her whole life - Luther only rejected the idea that Christian people would have the strength to emulate Mary, Jesus, Paul and so on, by practicing abstinence.

With Luther’s innovation, there was no longer place in Protestantism for unmarried celibate life such as practiced by Catholic monks, nuns, and priests, and there was no longer place for abstinence within marriage.

However, Luther (as well as Calvin, another major Reformer) still rejected contraception in the strongest possible terms, just like the whole Christian world (Catholic Church, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches in schism with Catholics, and all Protestant denominations) universally rejected it from the time of Christ up until 1930.

Now fast-forward 400 years from the Reformers (Calvin, Luther etc) to 1930.

Why did the Church of England cave on the issue in 1930, changing its official teaching at the Lambeth Conference of 1930?

Because the practice of large families has broken down, even before they changed their official teaching. Anglican pastors no longer had 6 children on average, more like 3 or 4. It was clear that they were contracepting, even if they failed to admit it.

Of course as a Catholic, I’m tempted to ask, if those Anglican pastors were overwhelmed with work, torn between pastoral duties to their flock and family duties to their children, and if they felt like they could no longer afford large families with many children, why didn’t they just practice sexual abstinence as a way to limit family size? Why legalize contraception in 1930, after it has been taught by all of Christendom, for 19 centuries in a row, throughout Christendom’s history, that contraception was a grave sin?

Apparently the answer has to do with this: abstinence is difficult, it’s a cross to bear, and crosses are not popular. Luther, as a monk who vowed to live a celibate (unmarried) and sexually abstinent life, experienced the weight of this cross first-hand. So, he had a “genius” idea: Hey, you don’t need to carry that cross! God doesn’t expect you to carry such a heavy cross! Apparently Luther’s idea remains very popular to this day. Luther absolved his followers from carrying the cross, and Protestant (as well as dissenting Catholic) couples today “know better” than to pick up and carry the heavy cross of sexual abstinence.

So then, since the cross of abstinence is rejected, what is a couple to do when they do want to enjoy sexual intimacy, but can’t afford to bear the natural consequence of having sex - begetting children and having a large family? Contraception! Bingo! Here’s the easy solution! You don’t have to carry the heavy cross of abstinence, you can still have sex, but without the burden of children that comes with sex.

This is the Protestant “Gospel” nowadays, and it’s a lot more popular than the austere Catholic teaching of “pick up and carry your cross”. It’s so popular that even the Orthodox, who pride themselves on faithful adherence to Tradition and to the teachings of the Early Church Fathers, rejected the teachings of the very Fathers (St. John Chrysostom and others) whom they revere, and who unanimously taught that contraception was a grave sin! Of course, “don’t pick up your cross” is also extremely popular with disobedient Catholics, who flaunt the teachings of the Church and contracept, even though the Catholic Church never wavered throughout its 2000-year history, constantly teaching that contraception is a grave sin, a mortal sin that can lead to the eternal damnation, to the fire of hell, of those who practice this sin and refuse to repent of it.

 

[Roy5]

Protestants don’t treat Luther and Calvin as infallible authorities. Artificial birth control was nearly impractical in their time, long before the pill and condoms were primitive as well.

The Church needs to reexamine its position on such matters. There is nothing in the Bible that condemns articifial birth control except for that weird Onan episode, when the brother of a deceased husband was supposed to impregnate his widow sister-in-law if she had had no children. Those circumstances don't relate in any way to the current Christian view of such a situation.

 Sexual relations between husbands and wives have many benefits in addition to having children. They bond.Ooften it becomes a vehicle of reconciliation after a spat, provides glue for the marriage generally, release tension, promote happiness, affection and intimacy, etc. These positive effects can be undermined if the couple are/is fearful that the conjugal love act may result in a pregnancy that they prefer to avoid at that time for various of many possible reasons.

 Protestants generally, by the way, are inclined to think that Mary and Joseph probably had conjugal relations. Why not? Matt. 1:25 suggests this, plus the ongoing debate as to whether Jesus' brothers were not really his brothers. Who cares if they had sexual relations? Can't they have had a healthy, normal marriage relationship? This tendency of the Church to make virginity such a virtue is misplaced. Is there anything more admirable than devoted motherhood? God's first commandment in scripture was 'be ye fruitful and multiply.' Why is it wrong for Mary and Joseph to have followed that commandment?

 

[exoflare]

God’s first commandment in scripture was ‘be ye fruitful and multiply.’ Why is it wrong for Mary and Joseph to have followed that commandment?

For one thing, it wasn’t a commandment. I’ll let someone else deal with all the other errors in your post.

 

[zz912]

God’s first commandment in scripture was ‘be ye fruitful and multiply.’ Why is it wrong for Mary and Joseph to have followed that commandment?

Because you haven’t studied the Ark of the Covenant enough.

Mary was the Ark of the New Covenant, and like the Ark of the Old Covenant, she held the Word of God (10 Commandments), held the Heavenly Manna (manna from the desert), and the High Priest (Aaron’s staff) inside her womb.

As Scripture says, where God has passed, none others may pass. Joseph would never have dreamed of touching Mary so.

Also, Mary confirms that she has taken a vow of celibacy, because she asks the angel how it will be that she will bear a child. Well she was betrothed to Joseph already, why would she be confused about conceiving a child?

 

[PastorVW]

I would differentiate between “contraception” and “birth control”. There are forms of birth control that most Evangelicals and other conservative protestants would not approve (Ella, Plan B, abortion, etc).

Absolutely correct.

We do stand with the Catholic Church in the current controversy on the basis of religious freedom.

 

[manualman]

Roy, you seem to sincerely be trying to articulare differences, but I’m afraid you’re badly missing the boat on this one.

Christianity universally deplored contraception until less than 100 years ago, when protestantism (first the Anglicans) began to rationalize it in “limited cases” then wholesale.

The case against contraception rests in understanding what sexual intimacy IS. Since the “Enlightenment”, people have increasingly adopted a materialist/utilitarian philosophy of life. The old catholic view of human sexuality of an inter-related ecosystem of sorts (my word for it), was discarded and the culture uncritically adopted the idea of human sexuality on an ala carte basis. No more were marriage, intercourse and babies seen as merely facets of a wholistic human sexuality, but as entirely different subjects altogether! When one starts from that assumption, it becomes quite easy to discard the ‘rules’ that flowed from the ancient wisdom of comprehending the interconnected nature of sexuality.

What catholics commonly refer to as “unitive and procreative functions” of marital sex is actually a way of describing aspects of a complete whole. You can’t preserve the unitive aspect of sex while chopping off the procreative any more than you can have a Trinity without the Son. Humans today have arrogantly assumed without examination that we know all we need to about the human soul to “fix” the little goof God made when he linked sex and babies. But the moral law mirrors the physical law; you can’t break it, you can only suffer the consequences of trying.

There is a reason that the rupture started at contraception. The consequences are subtle and hard to see if you don’t know what you are looking for. But the trajectory is plain in hindsight

1. Rationalize contraception in hard cases. (cutting off babies from sex & marriage)
2. Rationalize contraception universally as morally neutral or even good.
3. Rationalize premarital sex in “committed relationships” (cutting off sex from marriage)
4. Rationalize divorce when the procreative element of the marital purpose has been denigrated and the couple no longer feels fuzzy about each other.
   4A. Rationalize remarriage. (Wave hands fast to make Jesus’ words go away)
5. Rationalize abortion when the contraception fails.
6. Rationalize creating babies in test tubes (babies are unrelated to intimacy, after all)
7. Rationalize same sex “marriage” (since its all about the feelings, the sterile nature is irrelevant)
8. Rationalize polygamy if all parties are “consenting” (again, feelings are the only remaining basis)

These things all flow from one another. Sin begets sin. Always has.

P.S. It is a tired canard to accuse catholicism of being ‘negative’ about sex. We’re actually more positive about it than nearly anybody. Priestly and religious abstinance is about giving up something that is good, not denigrating it. A sacrifice for the sake of the Lord.

 

[Roy5]

I remember, with enormous sadness, that a mother (already of 11 children) on a devout French-Canadian family who lived down the road from us, sought to kill herself when she became pregnant with her 12th child. I was young, but my mother was very upset, not with the woman, but with the Church that demanded that the faithful avoid birth control. I believe that memory may have started me thinking about the problem at a very young age.

Perhaps Protestants all opposed artificial birth control. I don’t know, but I tend to doubt it. I’m aware that that is the line provided - that the Anglicans were the first to permit it. But how much birth control was there 75 or more years ago? The pill didn’t come along until when - 1970s? The methods then were usually crude and unreliable at best.

I believe that artificial birth control is a decision to be made by a married couple and not by any religion or state. The families that had 10-12 children when I was a kid - mostly French-Canadian (and I am 1/2 ditto) - usually saw the children drop out after the 8th grade, marry when they were 16-18 years old, and rarely have anyone attend college unless he selected the priesthood. Remember: I am referring to articial birth control here and nothing that induces an abortion. That is a totally separate issue. There are religious groups who don't believe in modern medicine, too, who take the Bible seriously and handle poisonous snakes (Mark 16:16), who believe in faith healing exclusively, perhaps. 

 Besides, the vast majority of Catholic couples practice birth control at one point or another so that they can safeguard the health of the mother, space their children, and have only the number that they can properly educate and otherwise provide for. The old on-the-farm days, when you could feed a lot of mouths from produce self-produced, are gone. It was a sad day when Paul VI, a Pope otherwise wise, felt the need to condemn birth control. One of its results is a vast array of cafateria Catholics plus a major exodus from the church. I think the Catholics may be more liberal on some of these social issues than evangelical Protestants. I've read that while Santorum is racking up the evangelical vote, he is losing the Catholic vote. Ironic, isn't it?

 

[TimothyH]

Catholic marriage goes farther. It is a sacrament, permanent bond. You can’t break it, only on grounds of adultery.

Contraception was prohibited and is now, and is a great evil.

If Catholic couples draw on the sacramental nature of their marriage, Christ is our strength. Many say their love for each other grows into a vocation in itself.

The sacrament can never be broken, even if there is adultery. Sacraments cannot be undone.

Repeated and unrepentant adultery may be grounds for separation, as would violence, drug use, etc., and these may even be grounds for civil divorce, but the sacrament cannot be undone.

If we are seperated from our spouse, even if we have a civil divorce, the sacrament stands. In such a case there are only two options - reconcile with our spouse or live as a celibate single.

-Tim-

 

[TimothyH]

The Anglican Church holds the Lambeth Conference every ten years. The conference in 1930 voted to allow contraception. The following is the actual verbiage;

*Resolution 15
*The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex **
Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.
Voting: For 193; Against 67.

In using the words “Other methods”, the Anglican Church opened the door to artificial contraception for the first time in the history of Christianity.

Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church did not wait until 1968 to respond. The following is from the encyclical Casti Connubii, issued by Pope Pius XI on the last day of the same year as the Anglican resolution permitting contraception.

Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.

The contrast between the two postions is stark. The anglican Church uses vagueness while the Catholic response is scathing, calling the Anglican decision “moral ruin”. In this one paragraph, the Church asserts what was clearly an uninterrupted Chrstian teaching, and this it does by virtue of its rightful place as God’s mouthpiece on earth.

The Methodists, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, all taught that contraception was a sin. Not the Southern Baptists or the Evangelical Churches - none taught that contraception was permissiable.

*Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20) *

This is where it started - 1930 - when sin became non sin.

-Tim-

 

[Keith_W_OR_USA]

I was listening to a program the other day regarding the whole contraception/ Catholic Church/ Insurance etc debate and something was mentioned to the effect that Protestantism had a similar view on birth control that the CC has now but has changed over time. My understanding is that birth control is ok within Protestantism(please correct if I’m wrong). Anyways, if this is the case, when and why has this stance changed?

Each Protestant Christian sect sets their own belief system regarding contraception and abortion. Most Protestant denominations leave the decsion wheteher a person uses contraception up to the indivdual, many protestant churches look at abortion for non-medical reasons as a sin.

 

[TimothyH]

Each Protestant Christian sect sets their own belief system regarding contraception and abortion. Most Protestant denominations leave the decsion wheteher a person uses contraception up to the indivdual, many protestant churches look at abortion for non-medical reasons as a sin.

This was not the case prior to 1930. Every Christian Church taught that contraception was a grave sin. No Christian Church taught otherwise prior to 1930.

-Tim-

 

[Marie_Gregg]

Jumping into the conversation -

I don’t think that the issue of contraception is as cut and dried as any of us would like it to be. Does the availability of contraceptives create a flippant attitude toward sex, a by-product of the so-called “sexual revolution” (a revolution that has led to freedom for none)? I don’t doubt that. Does it contribute to the devaluing of life? Probably.

But there is more to the story.

I use birth control pills. There are several reasons for this, one of which is that, without them, I produce very little of the hormones required to have children in the first place; lack of these hormones makes life pretty miserable. The most prominent reason, however, is that both my husband and myself suffer from Clinical Depression. I feel it is wise, in this season of my life, to do what I can to make sure that I would be a fit mother, should God so choose to make me one. It would not be wise to bring a child into the current situation. (That being said, if we did get pregnant, we would very much welcome that child).

I didn’t make the decision to go on the birth control pills lightly. I don’t think that sex should be disconnected from the creation of life. I simply think that there are times, seasons, in which using contraceptives can be a good decision.

P.S. - Before someone jumps into to tell me that God will give me the grace to be a mother, I know that. I also know that God gives us wisdom from on high - wisdom which I have sought from Him.

 

[Roy5]

Marie Gregg

 Good response.

 It may or may not be true that all Protestants condemned birth control before 1930. I tend to doubt it but if the research shows that, fine.

 Many mainline Protestants, right or wrong, apparently believe that when a policy is wrong, or no longer right, it is okay to change it. Remember how many witches were slain, thousands in Europe, some in the USA, because of Ex. 22:18. Intelligent people realized that you can't go around murdering 'witches'. Many of these 'witches' may have had severe psychological problems which ignorance attributed to Satan or whatever. Some probably were simply outspoken and offensive dissenters, so they were targeted.

  Change is not always bad. Thomas Aquinas called for the execution of heretics, and that once what the Church wanted. It gradually realized what an evil policy that was.

  Eventually the Catholic Church will realize that its blanket condemnation of birth control has to be qualified. There are good reasons and not so good reasons. I don't think either the Church or the State should be telling us what to do when it comes to our intimate relations as husband and wife. If anything is private, even sacred, that's it. Besides, as I noted already, artificial birth control has advanced enormously since the pill. If we are against birth control why not against artificial limbs etc.? Medicine marches on and we often have to move with it.

  There is nothing in the Bible re artificial birth control. That silly Onan story doesn't apply. In Christianity Onan was committing adultery!  I do know that God supposedly ordered Saul to slaughter every last Amalekite, which must have included many children in the womb. The good Lord even drowned everybody but eight of Noah's kinfolk. I often wondered how the tiny tots (and babies in the womb) could have become wicked already. David, that great king, must have been thrilled when the crowds shouted "Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his ten thousands." Sounds fishy to me. Didn't God give Ten Commandments to Moses up there on Mt. Sinai? Didn't Jesus even tell us to love our enemies?   

 Life is complicated, and believe as you wish. I personally think it's not the business of any church to tell husbands and wives how to manage their romantic love lives. Apparently the vast majority of Catholic couples don't pay any attention anyway.

 Let us love more and judge less. Somehow I think Jesus may have had that in mind.

 

[choliks]

I remember, with enormous sadness, that a mother (already of 11 children) on a devout French-Canadian family who lived down the road from us, sought to kill herself when she became pregnant with her 12th child. I was young, but my mother was very upset, not with the woman, but with the Church that demanded that the faithful avoid birth control. I believe that memory may have started me thinking about the problem at a very young age.

It’s not so much that the Church demanded the faithful to avoid birth control. It’s more of the Church admonishing the faithful to treat sex or marital relations in its totality, not just focusing on the gratification, unitive, or procreative aspects individually.

I just think a lot of the faithful just the miss the whole point. They think the Church wants them to make more babies.

The ultimate goal is holiness. If one feels the urge to have sex just for gratification, the Church urges the faithful to abstain.

 

[L_piperatus]

I remember, with enormous sadness, that a mother (already of 11 children) on a devout French-Canadian family who lived down the road from us, sought to kill herself when she became pregnant with her 12th child. I was young, but my mother was very upset, not with the woman, but with the Church that demanded that the faithful avoid birth control. I believe that memory may have started me thinking about the problem at a very young age.

Perhaps Protestants all opposed artificial birth control. I don’t know, but I tend to doubt it. I’m aware that that is the line provided - that the Anglicans were the first to permit it. But how much birth control was there 75 or more years ago? The pill didn’t come along until when - 1970s? The methods then were usually crude and unreliable at best.

I believe that artificial birth control is a decision to be made by a married couple and not by any religion or state. The families that had 10-12 children when I was a kid - mostly French-Canadian (and I am 1/2 ditto) - usually saw the children drop out after the 8th grade, marry when they were 16-18 years old, and rarely have anyone attend college unless he selected the priesthood. Remember: I am referring to articial birth control here and nothing that induces an abortion. That is a totally separate issue. There are religious groups who don't believe in modern medicine, too, who take the Bible seriously and handle poisonous snakes (Mark 16:16), who believe in faith healing exclusively, perhaps. 

 Besides, the vast majority of Catholic couples practice birth control at one point or another so that they can safeguard the health of the mother, space their children, and have only the number that they can properly educate and otherwise provide for. The old on-the-farm days, when you could feed a lot of mouths from produce self-produced, are gone.** It was a sad day when Paul VI, a Pope otherwise wise, felt the need to condemn birth control.** One of its results is a vast array of cafateria Catholics plus a major exodus from the church. I think the Catholics may be more liberal on some of these social issues than evangelical Protestants. I've read that while Santorum is racking up the evangelical vote, he is losing the Catholic vote. Ironic, isn't it?

Roy, the Church does not demand that the faithful avoid birth control!

Not to get overly graphic about this, but babies do not just “happen” without the spouses doing… well… you know what I mean… Thus, the spouses are always in control, because** sexual abstinence is a form of birth control** :doh2: and it was never condemned by the Church or by any of our Popes!

Both Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Casti Connubii, and Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, make it extremely clear that mutually agreed-upon periodic and total abstinence of the spouses are morally licit methods of birth control. But it’s not only these two Popes. The Catholic Church has many canonized saints from throughout its 2000-year history, who practiced sexual abstinence in marriage. Examples: St. Joseph and Holy Mary’s marriage, the marriage of St. Cecilia, who is a canonized saint, virgin, and martyr who lived in the Roman Empire during the persecution of Christians (3rd century A.D.), St. Emeric the Hungarian prince from the 11th century who likewise was a virgin and lived in a Josephite marriage with his wife, and so on. Concern for the well-being of the children, of the mother, are valid concerns recognized by the Catholic Church, and the Church offers periodic and total abstinence as the morally acceptable solution to space births, even avoid births if necessary.

 

[L_piperatus]

I can’t help but recall the Republican (Rick Santorum’s) donor who joked that in his youth, ladies practiced birth control by holding a Bayer Aspirin tablet between their knees!

The joke was totally lost on the TV host, who apparently didn’t get it that her guest was simply alluding to sexual abstinence! :doh2: He could’ve as well said, speaking to a young man, “You, Sir, keep your pants on, and that’s the best birth control!”

I mean, hey, keep your knees together (for ladies), keep your pants on, and you won’t end up getting pregnant/impregnating anyone! Folks, this is not rocket science! :doh2:

 

[L_piperatus]

It’s not so much that the Church demanded the faithful to avoid birth control. It’s more of the Church admonishing the faithful to treat sex or marital relations in its totality, not just focusing on the gratification, unitive, or procreative aspects individually.

I just think a lot of the faithful just the miss the whole point. They think the Church wants them to make more babies.

The ultimate goal is holiness. If one feels the urge to have sex just for gratification, the Church urges the faithful to abstain.

Yes, exactly. The Catholic Church is quite different from Mormons and “full quiver”-Protestants who believe that everybody should get married and have lots of children, “a full quiver of children”.

Within the Catholic Church, celibate (unmarried, sexually abstinent) life, married life with children, and even married life with mutually agreed sexual abstinence, are permissible and regarded as different, but valid paths to holiness. Nobody is expected to necessarily get married and have a lot of children, within the Catholic Church.

 

[Keith_W_OR_USA]

This was not the case prior to 1930. Every Christian Church taught that contraception was a grave sin. No Christian Church taught otherwise prior to 1930.

-Tim-

To say that no other Christian sect didn’t believe in Contraception prior to 1930 is false.

 

[Sherry_G]

Manualman’s post clearly outlines the difficulties that have arisen in our culture, all traceable back to the acceptance of birth control, hence the separation and disintegration of the sanctity of marriage and the devaluation of a human being’s worth. We are all made in God’s image and likeness, endowed with body mind and spirit, a unified whole person. the separation that has occurred as a direct result of chemical and artificial means has caused the objectification of women as sex objects to be used for pleasure alone. women have been duped into believeing that birth control frees them to indulge in sexual activity without consequence. The price they are paying is huge. Just look around at all the lost and lonely young people, who continually search for ways to fill the void in their lives. Multiple sexual partners, sometime even within the same day and what exactly is this accomplishing? If this is freedom, please lock me up now. Men, too, for all their macho braggingof conquests are also totally lost and miserable. We are made for more than this. Jesus calls us to be holy, just as His heavely Father is holy. Birth control is an evil that is destroying our civilization. Marriage is falling by the wayside, children are growing up with little guidance in their one parent homes, and the public schools are operating with an agenda to normalize aberrant lifestyles and silence any Christian who dares to speak out. All this began with the acceptance of birth control and is traceable back to 1930…